Reporter's Notebook: At the Society of Information Display conference and expo, vendors show new ways to keep snooping eyes away from your screenincluding eyeglass monitors.

SAN FRANCISCOThe dueling needs for privacy and data sharing played out here at the annual SID (Society of Information Display) International Symposium. Vendors showed new technologies that can keep neighbors on a flight from getting a glimpse of the corporate secrets on a laptop screen and new ways to share video on an iPod or handheld.

The SID conference is a regular gathering of OEM technology vendors, manufacturers and suppliers for entire computer industry. In addition to papers presented on the latest technologies, the expo booths hold products ranging from ribbon video connectors that fit inside laptop cases to the latest touch-pads.

Screen sizes vary from tiny (or even nonexistent, using lasers that create an image via a scanning light sent directly to your retina) to 100-inch high-definition television screens.

On the privacy front, vendors showed three different approaches to microdisplays for personal viewing. All of these displays are worn by the user in eyeglasses or in a display that covers the eyes.

Some are see-through designs, placing the image within the visual plane of the user, while others function more as super-portable screens that block out the world.

Lumus PD-20 Series. Based in Rehovot, Israel, Lumus demonstrated two new models in its consumer line of heads-up displays, the single-sided PD-21 and the dual-element PD-22. The devices use the company's LOE (light-guide optical element) technology, a thin, transparent lens that collects light from a tiny projector mounted on the side of the optics.

The LOE combiner package can be mounted on standard frameless eyewear, according to Eli Glikman, product manager for Lumus. The device provides a bright, full-color, 320x240-pixel image.

The technology is a consumer version of the company's PD-10 unit, which is aimed at industrial and military applications. That display offers Super VGA resolution, or 800x600 pixels.